Objective
The societal and economical impact of slip accidents are wide ranging and there is an urgent need to prevent slip accidents via the design, third party testing and installation of safer flooring surfaces. The production of safer flooring presents a large potential market for the ceramic floor tile industry. Despite the existence of safety requirements for other products through the Construction Products Directive, neither univocal guidelines to help manufacturers in producing slip resistant ceramic tiles nor harmonized test methods for measurement of the slip resistance of tiles are currently available. For instance, the current standard (CEN-EN14411) defining the minimum requirements needed by ceramic tiles to be labelled with CE marking, does not include a common "European" requirement on slip resistance characteristics for ceramic tiles. Hence, various national level standard methods are still used to assess the slip resistance. In the absence of agreed slip resistance requirements and tests, there is a tendency for tile manufacturers to strive for innovative products via aesthetic routes rather than improved H&S performance in use. In SlipSTD project, a consortium comprising leading experts in this field will work together with industry representatives to design and manufacture standard surfaces with varying slip resistant properties. The design of surfaces will be based on tribology models and biomechanical testing and modelling. The fundamental knowledge and scientifically specified and constructed surfaces generated by the SlipSTD project will provide: - participating SMEs and IAGs with practical know-how and a suitable benchmark for designing and manufacturing slip resistant ceramic tiles; - CEN committees with scientifically defined surfaces that can be used to validate different tests and therefore will be a decisive step towards a harmonized European slip resistance test.
Fields of science
Keywords
Call for proposal
FP6-2004-SME-COLL
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Funding Scheme
Collective - SMEs-Collective research projectsCoordinator
STOKE-ON-TRENT
United Kingdom
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Participants (19)
MAASTRICHT
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